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Would you be interested in doing another game with The Authentic Colonization mod? It's a small download, simple install and sits alongside vanilla no problem. Lots of small tweaks, I've played it a lot more than I've played vanilla now so I'm not sure of the precise differences, but there's a few I can list.

- New settlements have no buildings. Obviously makes the opening slower, but it means construction priorities and town specialisation are more important and need more planning.

- Farms and plantations are different improvements, with plantations providing more trade resources and less food. Again makes town specialisation more important

- Oppressed natives are more of a threat. They seem more likely to fight back if you keep taking their land (rather than randomly giving you their villages).

- Significant changes to the end game. I haven't actually played either the mod or vanilla to independece, but there's more details in the link.

That the mod promotes further specialisation is hilarious to me when I note that every FAQ I have found suggests turning every single town to a metropolis. Early on before caravans and manufacturing specialists the opposite seems true by my experience. Each "man" in a one man town can do 2 jobs. For example set a town on a cotton deposit and have the man make cloth? The town gathers the cotton, the worker processes it.

Sure a stacked town builds stuff faster by getting the wood, food and production done but there is no reason such a workforce couldn't exist souly in a hub, or as part of a migratory workforce.

Still you end up guarding a bigger area but that's what dragoons are for.

FAQ for the mod, or vanilla? I haven't played a whole lot of vanilla so maybe I'm wrong, but I've been having fun with the mod and my friend who's spent more time with both prefers it. On your cotton example - you can do that, but you're wasting a lot of resources. Put a town on a cotton deposit and you'll get what, 3 or 4 cotton a turn? One non-specialist can process that much. Build the town next to a cotton deposit, build a plantation on the deposit and have it worked by an expert planter, and you'll get 12-14 per turn.

The idea is to balance out your production - if you have miners and lumberjacks and blacksmiths in every town it makes them all self sufficient, but if you produce wood and ore in the best sited towns and ship them where they're needed, you can spread out more and tap more resources, because you don't have redundant people doing the same job in many places. And if each town is making 4x as much money as a one man town sitting on a resource node, you can afford extra specialists and soldiers easily.

FAQ for the mod, or vanilla? I haven't played a whole lot of vanilla so maybe I'm wrong, but I've been having fun with the mod and my friend who's spent more time with both prefers it. On your cotton example - you can do that, but you're wasting a lot of resources. Put a town on a cotton deposit and you'll get what, 3 or 4 cotton a turn? One non-specialist can process that much. Build the town next to a cotton deposit, build a plantation on the deposit and have it worked by an expert planter, and you'll get 12-14 per turn.

You are right of course, but FAQs/Guides for vanilla suggest anything less than a 9 man town is a mistake, where early on that would be a bloated travesty unable to tap key resources around the map.

If you sat an expert cloth maker on a cotton deposit next to a river you'd be outputting 6 cloth a turn with no waste, and some excess food too, not bad for just one man no?

You either focus or swarm out. Both have advantages and disadvantages and it comes down to personal preference. At this moment though, with the rather peace loving collonists and the hidden (maybe to well hidden) natives your swarm out tactic might work. Yet in a more "normal" game you would rake up native anger in no time and have way to few soldiers to defend all your towns. Thats the reason of the metropolis type build, it's the safer option.

I guess an AAR report might be needed to really sell this game, people will be expecting a civ clone. And it's more like a strategic roguelike when you consider the (notably absent from our current game) natives and the royals. Sure, it lacks truly random events but the boost in aggression natives get when you sell them guns and the way the king reacts to your behaviour really feels "right".